A black-and-white photography specialist is applying its expertise with silver compounds to new technologies, which could result in booths that can diagnose diseases including cancer.

Harman Technology’s core business is making monochrome camera film and photo paper under the Ilford brand, which has been manufactured at its base in Mobberley, Cheshire, since 1903.

However, the company was hit hard by the rapid adoption of digital cameras in early 2000s and it went into receivership in 2004.

The business was broken up and Harman Technology was formed when the monochrome photography division, based in Cheshire, underwent a management buyout.

It received an almost immediate boost when Kodak decided to stop making black and white photo paper, boosting Harman's market share.

Its other main competitor, Agfa Photo, also went out of business in 2005, giving Harman 80 per cent of the market.

Harman’s film division is now growing revenues through further market share gains, particularly in the US.

However, the black and white paper market is shrinking by around 10 per cent a year, and the film market is also declining by around five per cent a year.

This shrinking market inspired Harman to diversify its income streams and apply its technical expertise in other areas.

Non-photographic products currently make up around £750,000 of Harman’s £22m annual revenues. The firm hopes to grow the figure to more than £5m in three years.

It has looked to find alternative uses for compounds containing silver, which react to light and are the key component in photographic paper.

The firm employs more than 20 people in its research and development department, which has a budget of around £500,000 a year.

Harman chairman Howard Hopwood said: “It has been known since Phoenician times that silver acts as an antibiotic.

“Ten or 15 years ago, that application started to become important again, because antibiotic resistance in bugs started to become an issue.

“When we took over the business, we realised we needed something that would take us into the future.”

Harman specialises in making silver chloride, which can be coated on to textile fibres to kill microbes that cause, for example, socks to smell.

The same technology is used on the inside of fridges and in medical equipment, and Harman is finding a new market by manufacturing silver compounds in special forms that can be incorporated into textiles and plastic products.

But perhaps Harman’s most exciting project is a joint venture it has formed with Israeli company Cellect Technologies to develop a diagnostic tool.

The business is called Cellect Biotech, and Harman is the majority owner.

Mr Hopwood explained: “In the early stages of cancer, cells from a tumour are washed into the blood stream at very low concentrations.

“At the moment, although they can be detected, the machinery required is big, expensive and needs a very highly-skilled technician to operate.

“Our idea is to use the properties of silver to separate those rare cells out from the bloodstream so the cancer can be diagnosed much earlier and then treated more effectively.”

Essentially, Harman has developed a technique where rare cells in a blood sample are labelled with a light-emitting substance.

The sample is then placed on a small glass plate treated with a silver compound, which reacts to the light-emitting rare cells.

The rare cell sticks to the silver compound on the glass plate, and the healthy cells are washed away.

Harman says the equipment is cheaper than technology currently available and is portable as it requires no power supply.

Existing techniques also kill the cells they are designed to detect, but Harman’s method captures them alive so they can then be grown in a lab and studied further.

The technique can also be used to extract healthy cells, such as stem cells, which are currently the focus of intense research.

Mr Hopwood said: “We believe we can extract cells at a concentration of around one in a million, which is very high.

“You can use that to assess diseases at a very early stage and to count cells to monitor how a disease is progressing.”

He added: “I have a vision of a machine – something like a photo booth – which takes a blood sample and offers the user a menu of diseases that they would like to be tested for.”

Harman has secured grants totalling around £750,000 from the Technology Strategy Board to develop the system, which it has matched with £750,000 of its own.

Mr Hopwood said: “I would hope by 2014 we would be starting to sell them to researchers and academics.

“But I would say it would be at least five years before we see diagnostic booths.”